This invention relates to foil jewelry and a method of making foil jewelry and in particular to foil jewelry made from thin metal foil. The method permits thin metal foil which is normally too flexible to be used for jewelry to be shaped into unique designs, which designs impart rigidity and strength to the foil.
The jewelry industry is highly competitive and lower cost attractive jewelry is sought by the consumer. The price of jewelry made of precious metals is highly dependent on the metal weight of the final product. This has lead to the need to develop jewelry with less metal weight which has the look, strength and feel of jewelry with more weight.
One example of lowering the metal weight of jewelry is to form a hollow rope chain rather than solid rope chain. The hollow rope chain has up to 60 percent less metal than its solid counterpart, but with the look, feel and hardness of a solid rope chain. As the price of precious metals increases the need for attractive jewelry with less precious metal requirement increases.
This has prompted jewelry manufacturers to seek methods of creating jewelry that looks aesthetically similar to heavier products with similar strength characteristics. Therefore, by way of example in the gold jewelry industry reducing weight of gold is an important cost reduction goal. The problem has been that as the gold material is reduced in thickness to reduce its weight, the flexibility of the gold increases and the final product loses its rigidity.
What is needed is a thin precious metal piece of jewelry which has the look and feel of its heavier counterpart and a method of making the jewelry which assures a consistently rigid and strong product.
Typical prior art methods of making jewelry with various shapes include either stamping techniques or casting techniques. Using casting techniques, many arbitrary shapes can be achieved of just about any type of shape desired. This is achieved by forming a mold and from the mold forming a wax pattern. The wax pattern is then utilized to form the jewelry and the wax is melted out. This process is typically called a lost wax process. Using rubber molds, which typically can be bent, numerous shapes normally not achievable can be achieved, including bends of almost any angular shape.
However, when dealing with casting techniques, the thickness of the jewelry involved is rather substantial and as a result pieces cast from precious metals are typically heavy, cost a lot, and require a large amount of gold.
Other techniques that have been used to form jewelry pieces involve stamping techniques. Using a stamping process, thin sheets of gold can be utilized to form the piece of jewelry. However, using a stamping technique it is impossible to achieve bends of less than 90.degree. (representing the measure of the space between the horizontal plane of the sheet of precious metal and the adjacent exterior surface of the crimped bend on both sides of such bend) since in a stamping technique the two parts mate one into the other and angles must be greater than 90.degree. in order to permit the two parts to be extracted from each other.
As a result, using stamping techniques there are limits as to the style and design of shapes that can be made into the jewelry and specifically bends of less than 90.degree. are not achievable.